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Hwang Seon-woo, a leading swimmer in Korea, has made a strong start towards winning the World Championship medal 11 years after Park Tae-hwan.
In the 200m freestyle preliminaries, the main event, she easily advanced to the semi-finals by placing 2nd overall.
This is Correspondent Ha Seong-ryong.
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Hwang Seon-woo, the holder of the 200m freestyle junior world record, raced in the final group of the preliminaries.
Tokyo Olympic gold medalist Tom Dean of England and Popovich of Romania, who holds the world record for the 100m junior, competed.
In preparation for the semifinals held on the same day, he adjusted his pace without overdoing it and maintained third place behind Popovich and Dean until 150m, and then overtook Dean in the last 50m and came in second after Popovich.
His personal best was over a second of baldness, but while sparing his power, he lightly advanced to the semifinals as 2nd overall in the qualifiers.
After winning the gold medal at the short course world championships in December last year, Hwang Seon-woo, who is challenging the long course world championship medal for the first time in 11 years since Park Tae-hwan, will enter the semifinals at dawn tomorrow (20th).
[Hwang Seon-woo/Sooyoung National Team: The condition is good, so I want to run the race as I prepared hard until the finals.
I will do my best to live up to your expectations.]
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Kim Seo-young finished 5th overall in the semi-final of the 200m individual medley and wrote a new history of being the first Korean swimmer to reach the final three times in a row at the World Championships.
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Kim Woo-min, who reached the men's 400m freestyle final for the first time since Park Tae-hwan, finished sixth with a personal best of 3:45.64.
(Video editing: Lee Jung-taek)